London - - British police have arrested 16 terrorist suspects during latest raids in London targeting suspected secret training camps for suicide bombers, British media reported on Sunday.
Police were investigating a 'network of terror training camps across Britain which they fear are nurturing a new wave of home-grown Islamic extremists,' the Observer newspaper reported, quoting security sources.
The raids centred on a Muslim school in south-east England and on a restaurant frequented by young Muslims in London.
Police cordoned off an Islamic school in Tunbridge Wells south of London, while dozens of officers searched the premises, which British media said was linked to radical Egyptian-born preacher Abu Hamza.
A London court sentenced Abu Hamza to seven years in prison in February for inciting Muslims to kill and stoking racial hatred.
Hamza is suspected of having organized terrorist training courses at the school.
The operation began on Friday night when about 50 armed police stormed a Chinese restaurant in south London popular with Muslims around 10 pm, questioned some of the customers and arrested 12 males aged between 17 and 49.
Those arrested were suspected of commissioning, instigating and preparing attacks, Scotland Yard said.
Two more suspects were arrested early Saturday at their homes. In Manchester, anti-terrorist investigators led away two men but police there said the arrests were not connected with the arrests in London.
The home of radical Islamic preacher Abu Abdullah in Bromley on the southern outskirts of London was also searched.
Abu Abdullah had in recent weeks threatened renewed terrorist attacks in Britain and said he would 'gladly' kill British soldiers in Afghanistan.
In an interview, he also praised the suicide bombers who blew themselves up on the London Underground and on a London bus on July 7, 2005 killing 52 people.
The Sunday Times reported that Abu Abdullah was among those detained in the raids, which began late Friday evening with the
The London operation was planned for months, a police spokesman said, and had no connection with recent arrests of suspects in an alleged plot to blow up passenger planes bound for the US from Britain.
He added that the arrests also had nothing to do with last year's suicide attacks in London.
The arrests were prompted by fears that 'young radicalized Muslim men are being trained for suicide attacks in 'crowded areas' of the capital and possibly Manchester, the Sunday Telegraph said, quoting security sources.
Shortly before the operation began, Scotland Yard's anti-terror chief Peter Clarke has told the BBC that thousands of people in Britain are under police surveillance on suspicion of terror links.
'Not just terrorists, not just attackers, but the people who might be tempted to support or encourage,' he said.
� 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur